New York Laws
Article 45 - Fraternal Benefit Societies
4522 - Exemptions of Certain Organizations.

(1) Organizations of workmen of the same trade or of several allied
trades maintained for the purpose of securing by united action the most
favorable conditions as regards wages, hours and conditions of labor,
and the protection of their individual rights in the prosecution of
their trade or trades.
(2) Organizations which limit their membership to the employees of a
particular city or town, or of a designated business corporation or
firm, or of one or more business corporations or firms having business
interests in common, except as otherwise provided in subsection (f) of
section one thousand one hundred eight of this chapter. Any such
organization which limits its membership to the employees of a
corporation having more than five thousand employees may provide for
hospital, surgical and medical benefits for the employee, his or her
spouse, and his or her child or children not over eighteen years of age.
(3) Organizations of a religious, charitable, benevolent or fraternal
character, which are not organized or maintained primarily for the
purpose of providing insurance benefits, and which have not more than
fifteen hundred members who are or may be entitled to any insurance
benefits unless the organization obligates itself to pay a death benefit
of more than five hundred dollars on the death of any one member, or
disability benefits of more than three hundred fifty dollars to any one
person in any one year, or both.
(4) Organizations which limit their membership to persons engaged in
one or more occupations in the same or similar lines of business and
which, together with their legal predecessors or affiliated bodies
continuously paid or provided for the payment of death or disability
benefits to their members for a period of not less than fifteen years
prior to January first, nineteen hundred forty.
(5) Any organization of a religious, charitable, benevolent or
fraternal character, which is not organized or maintained primarily for
the purpose of providing insurance benefits, which have furnished
hospital benefits to its members under a plan where the maximum charge
for such benefits is not in excess of two dollars per annum and which
was in operation for ten years prior to March first, nineteen hundred
forty-one, or which obligates itself to pay a death benefit of not more
than one hundred dollars on the death of any one member, and has been in
operation for more than twenty-five years prior to March first, nineteen
hundred fifty.
(6) Organizations which limit their membership to members of a
fraternal benefit society organized under the provisions of this chapter
and which provide either cemetery benefits, or funeral benefits not in
excess of seventy-five dollars for any one interment, or both, for such
member, his or her spouse or his or her child or children not over
twenty-one years of age.
(b) The foregoing exemptions shall not apply to:
(1) any organization which is incorporated or organized under the laws
of, or has its principal office or headquarters in, any province or
country outside of the United States,
(2) any organization, except one specified in paragraph two of
subsection (a) hereof, which makes or issues annuity contracts,
(3) any organization of any of the kinds specified in paragraph two,
three or five of subsection (a) hereof if it gives or allows, or
promises to give or allow, to any person any compensation for procuring
new members, or
(4) any subordinate lodge of any society providing insurance benefits
to its members.
(c) The superintendent may require from any organization claiming
exemption under subsection (a) hereof, by examination in accordance with
section three hundred ten of this chapter, or otherwise, such
information as will enable him to determine whether such organization is
exempt under this section.
(d) No organization of the kinds hereinbefore specified which
obligates itself to pay life insurance or accident or health or
disability insurance benefits to its members shall make, issue or
deliver in this state any certificate or other written evidence of such
obligation unless the same shall have conspicuously printed on the first
page thereof in bold-faced type not smaller than ten point the following
statement: "This organization does not operate under the supervision of
the New York State Department of Financial Services."